X11 over SSH

CentOS 5's and Fedora 15's base installations are pretty good prepared to use X11 over SSH. You just need to install one more package on the server you're connecting to: xorg-x11-xauth. According to yum info, the purpose of this package is:
xauth is used to edit and display the authorization information used in connecting to an X server.
This editting probably means synchronising X11 authority cookies between SSH peers.

Installing is done using:
yum install xorg-x11-xauth

Then ssh into the box using:
ssh -X [servername]

© GeekLabInfo X11 over SSH is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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USB Video DVD Maker for Linux

Today I borrowed a USB video device, just to see if I can get it working on Linux. And I did! The device's package shows that is supports PAL (720x576@25fps) and NTSC (720x480 @ 30fps), but not much more.

According to lsusb, the device is built by eMPIA Technology, Inc and it has id eb1a:2861. Because I have another webcam attached, the device is connected to /dev/video1 is a character device with major 81 and minor 1. In the /sys filesystem, there's information on the device. I can find the right node using the next command:

cd /sys/dev/char/81:1

This is a symlink to (in my case) /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb2/2-5/2-5:1.0/video4linux/video1. In this directory, I find some more useful information. The file name tells me the device is actually a em28xx-based device.

The device has 2 inputs: a serie of RCA connectors with a composite signal and a SVideo connector. This is represented by showing two "sub-devices". The composite signal is /dev/video1, while the SVideo connector is /dev/vbi0.

To display the screen of my Sony* HDR-SR11 camera, I use the command:

mplayer -cache 128 -tv driver=v4l2:device=/dev/video1:input=1:width=720:height=576:outfmt=i420 tv://

* Yes, a Sony. And I'm really sorry. I bought it several years ago. I'm boycotting Sony nowadays.

© GeekLabInfo USB Video DVD Maker for Linux is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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Google Talk on Fedora 13

Since a few days, Google has this great feature that allows you to dial land lines from your gmail account. Unfortunately, they are only shipping a Linux client for Debian/Ubuntu. I'm using a custom repository with a lot of custom-build RPMs, and I really don't feel like switching away from RedHat-style for servers and clients.

How to use the .deb file on Fedora?

  • First, go to gmail and click on the "call" icon in the left sidebar
  • Download the .deb file offered. I use x86_64, so I get the file google-talkplugin_current_amd64.deb
  • Start a shell
  • mv [filename] /tmp
  • mkdir /tmp/googletalk
  • cd /tmp/googletalk
  • now, extract the file: ar vx ../google-talkplugin_current_amd64.deb
  • you get 3 files, control.tar.gz data.tar.gz and debian-binary
  • extract data.tar.gz: tar zxvf data.tar.gz
  • I don't want the google crontab, which of course is debian-based, so I only copy relevant files: cp -R opt usr /

Now, on a Debian based system, we would be ready. But on Fedora, some lib versions are incorrent. Link to the correct files:

  • cd /lib
  • ln -s libssl.so.1.0.0a libssl.so.0.9.8
  • ln -s libcrypto.so.1.0.0a libcrypto.so.0.9.8

Restart Firefox. Now you're done.

© GeekLabInfo Google Talk on Fedora 13 is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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MS Core fonts on Fedora 13

Due to copyright issues, Fedora cannot include the "core" fonts Arial, Times, Verdana etc. Instead, Fedora offers an alternative under the name "Liberation fonts". Well, great. Except that 99,9% of all documents received use these core fonts, and I'm not planning to do a find and replace with each and every document I open.

So, I'm sorry to say this: I think trying to replace the core fonts is simply stupid.

How to build your own font package

wget https://www.geeklab.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/msttcore-fonts-2.0-3.spec
yum install rpm-build cabextract
rpmbuild -ba msttcore-fonts-2.0-3.spec

Now install your package

sudo rpm -i ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/noarch/msttcore-fonts-2.0-3.noarch.rpm

© GeekLabInfo MS Core fonts on Fedora 13 is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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